ASEAN, the 10 member economic bloc in SE Asia has a working group on IP. It is chaired at present by Dr Freddy Harris, who is also Director-General of the Directorate General of Intellectual Property in Indonesia.
This week all the region's IP offices signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with South Korea. The intent is to provide a framework for cooperation. They want to promote IP in each other's jurisdictions and create a mechanism for bilateral exchange and cooperation.
This is yet another example of bilateral cooperation in the Asian region. Korea is a major investor in the region as well as a heavy user of SE Asian IP systems. For example it is consistently around the 6th largest filer of Trademarks patents and designs in Indonesia.
